Maria Jacobs, MD

Historically, two-thirds of patients with endometrial carcinoma had disease confined to the uterus, and the cornerstone of treatment was total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Since the introduction of surgical staging in 1988, however, more patients are found to have disease outside the uterine cavity. Unfortunately, the current rules for staging are not followed by every practitioner, and the required specimens for pathologic examination are not always obtained. Therefore, recommendations for postoperative adjuvant therapy are usually based on the surgico-pathologic information available for each patient.